Hello everyone! I recently have been seeing this problem while watching shows and reading in Japanese. I have vocabulary studied to like adept 3 or seasoned and when I encounter it in real text I can’t remember it, but when I see it in Bunpro it’s comes back to me relatively quickly.
Could this be me studying wrong or me not actually understanding the words and just have some sort of recognition when it’s in Bunpro that makes me understand it?
Thanks,
This is a common issue to encounter when learning vocab and other elements through SRS. Rest assured your learning isn’t somehow fake or invalid, your mind just needs to adapt it’s existing knowledge to be applied more broadly. Just takes some practice outside Bunpro or whatever tool.
Agreed. And for me atleast, it’s only mostly n3 and up that I have this problem so I think when they release cloze for the other levels it’ll also help. I feel I learn better when I have to recall the verb itself and not the meaning
Ya I had that problem, well I still have it sometimes too. But it just kind of sorts itself out naturally. But if you just keep giving yourself new stimuli you’ll start to recognize the words out of bunpro. At first it is kinda annoying and feels downheartening because it’s basically relearning what you already know, BUT since you already know it it’s super fast. That being said what I am referring to is just the meaning of the words. The reading? Ya if there isn’t furigana I am normally boned.
It’s a VERY normal problem. It’s because your brain doesn’t expect to see them words in the wild. If you keep up your SRS reviews whilst also consistently read (doesn’t matter if you have to look up words you think you should know) you will get rid of this problem.
Another great way to get rid of this is perhaps use jpdb.io to prelearn vocab for a specific vn/ln/anime/drama which would help as you would know you will see all the words you’ve learnt in that piece of media so your brain will expect it.
It happens organically for me. My favorite is when I’m listening to a Jpop song I’ve been listening to for a long, long time and suddenly realize I understand a lyric I did not understand before. Or when I’m watching anime and have a “Hey I learned that word/grammar construction in BunPro!”
What’s happening here is that we SRS users learn the vocabulary and grammar, so we know it in the context of the tool that we are using, but our brains still need to be trained (or adapt) to be able to apply it naturally, which is a different skill than just learning the words and the grammar. I think one thing that may help you work on this skill is producing your own sentences. When you learn a new word or grammar point, try to make a sentence using it. Or if you keep a journal, sneak in a couple of Japanese sentences here and there!
Thanks! I have tried to write sentences before but I never did it as a habit. I’ll start doing this more frequently
This is completely normal, and there are a few things that may be contributing to it. In my personal experience, the most common cause is remembering based on reassurance. Scientifically I am not sure if this has an actual name, so someone feel free to chime in if it does.
Basically what remembering based on reassurance is, is the extra layer of certainty that we have within a closed system, which forces you to think about things in a different way. For example, if the word 臨時 ‘temporary’ comes up in your reveiws, your brain will look at the word and think ‘I should know this, otherwise why would it be in my reviews’. This layer of eliminating possibilities actually makes it far easier to remember things that you may not actually know so well. However, when seeing 臨時 in the wild, there is no guarantee that you have ever studied it before. This removes the ability of your brain to be able to focus on a small subset of words, and tests whether you can actually distinguish it from every single other word in the language.
I think for many learners, getting through this stage takes time, but is certainly very very normal. I think one of the best ways to combat it is to read all of the sentences you get in your vocab reviews, rather than focusing on the target word. Although these are all sentences in Bunpro, many of the surrounding words in those sentences are not going to be things that your brain can help you out with through process of elimination, so it will all be practice that is applicable in real life.
immersion immersion immersion!!! super normal issue to have.
Lots of great replies here. My little chime in is this:
SRS introduces a new vocab/grammar point and helps prime you for seeing it in the real world or in immersion
Seeing that vocab/grammar point being used by speakers of the language makes something click in your brain that makes you realize at a deeper level that this isn’t a fantasy language and that people really use this vocab/grammar point to communicate.
At this point you really acquire the vocab/grammar point
It’s a great feeling 
Nothing to add to this other than to chime in and say that in psych/cognitive science terms, this is called recognition vs recall.
Essentially, our brain has a much easier time at recognition, as it can use certain cues (ie bunpro example sentences) to retrieve information related to that cue. With recall, our brain has to sort through more information and memories to try to match and apply it to the situation you’re in (ie watching tv or talking to a native speaker).
Just in case you’re wanting to look more into it and are struggling to find the right key words to describe it!
I’ve had the same experience with Japanese and other languages and 100% believe in this “remembering based on reassurance”.
That’s why I think it’s extremely important to start consuming real content very early in your studies, even if you struggle to make sense of a lot of it. Seeing the words/kanji/grammatical structures in the wild reinforces them tremendously.
It’s a bit frustrating of course when you look something up and you realize that you already studied it, but it also creates a powerful “real-world” memory that makes it vastly more likely that you’ll remember it the next time you encounter it.
I think one of the best ways to combat it is to read all of the sentences you get in your vocab reviews, rather than focusing on the target word.
@Asher This sounds great, and I’d love to make my vocab reviews more effective, but can you help me understand what this looks like in practice?
For example, my vocab reviews only ever prompt me with the target word itself, and I have to type in the translation. My current vocab deck and card settings are set to Bunpro Cloze. Am I supposed to answer the card translation and then manually open the info and look through various sentences? Or, am I missing some setting that would allow the card to prompt me with a full sentence rather than just a word?
I feel like this is probably explained really well in a forum post or FAQ, but I couldn’t easily find it. In any case, it might be nice if the Deck Settings page had some indicator as to the “recommended” setting, or an in-place tooltip or link for more information about the options.
Don’t know if anyone said this before, but there is the issue of font at play too. Your brain, if you only use the srs, isn’t learning to process the abstraction of the kanji, aka, the generalization of the shape of the kanji.
In other words, even though there are slight differences between the ways the kanji looks in different fonts, it is still the same kanji. So when you are looking at the kanji in a new font, one different from the bunpro font, your brain says to itself, “I know what the ‘読’ kanji looks like, and what I’m looking at is slightly different, so I know that it isn’t ‘読’. Wow! I have no idea what this kanji is, I’ve never seen it before, but I at least know it’s not ‘読’.”
That being the case, your subconscious brain can’t tell you what it is you are looking at because it is sure it has no idea what this ‘読’ like thing it is looking at is. You might think that I’m being silly, but the brain is incredible powerful at comparison and recognition, and it is literally doing what I’m saying it is doing.
So until your brain sees 読 in several different fonts, and learns an abstraction of 読 that it can apply in several different situations, you won’t be able to recall 読 is when you see it in the wild, because your brain has no idea what it is processing.
Bunpro should really include and use several different fonts automatically on the site so you learn these abstractions right away. Just my two cents.
If you’re on n3-n1 the cloze feature hasn’t been added yet. You can only use it for n5-n4. And I think they said it would be added for n3 in a month or 2, whenever they finish translating the sentences.
Also I think what they meant was to read all the sentences in the place where you can add the vocab to your reviews and see its meanings not in the SRS, atleast until cloze gets completed.
I should have thought about it being phased in like other features, thanks! I’m on N3. Looking forward to it.
There are a few different review styles. Manual input, Bunpro Cloze, and Flashcard. At the moment, the sentence only displays when doing Bunpro Cloze (and only for N5 and N4, as we have to make them).
Looking back on it though, this actually may not have been the best idea. Seems like a terrible waste to have sentences unless you’re able to see them in basically any review type. That extra reading will only ever be doing good. I’ll see if we can adjust this so that viewing sentences is possible in any review style!
As for the Bunpro Cloze for higher levels, we will have N3 released soon, and then will begin on N2 soon after.
I have the same thing haha. There are times I feel like my progress has stalled in learning, but I’ve learned to gauge my progress every month.
I always have to gut check myself and remind me that I’m learning a lifelong skill and I just have to keep plugging away at it little by little and switch up my studies if I notice a multi month issue with my strategy